Silver worth £150m recovered from sunken WWII ship

Seventy years after a German torpedo sunk a British ship, the wreck's cargo is finally made it to the Royal Mint, in the form of silver coins.

A US salvage firm contracted by the British government has recovered £150 million worth of silver, at depths of three miles, the Guardian reports. This is deeper than the Titanic and the largest quantity of precious metals ever recovered from such depths.

Now, some of the 100-tonne treasure has arrived at the Mint.

The collector coins depict the ship, SS Gairsoppa, on which all 85 crew members died in February 1941.

SS Gairsoppa had been transporting silver and iron ore from India because the Royal Mint's supplies were running low during the war.

Under the contract, the American firm Odyssey will keep 80% of the silver with the rest going mainly to the Treasury and a small amount to the Royal Mint.

Odyssey also has a highly controversial contract to recover treasures from another British warship, HMS Sussex.

Ana Komnenic is an assistant editor at MINING.com. Ana's work has been published in the Huffington Post, Business in Vancouver, The New York World, and DNAinfo.com in New York City. She has also worked at the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIN) in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ana holds an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University.
You can reach Ana at akomnenic@mining.com or find her on Twitter @anakomnenic